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A bow to Bolender: Todd Bolender, who grew up with city ballet and has directed companies worldwide, is a living example of dance, American style.

Article Excerpt
It is an unusually hot day in Seattle, turning the main studio in Pacific Northwest Ballet's Phelps Center into a steam bath. On a tatty velvet circular banquette, three dancers in rehearsal clothes and pointe shoes have just demurely seated themselves--but not demurely enough. They are in the early stages of rehearsing Todd Bolender's Souvenirs, which the company will perform this month on the same weekend that Kansas City Ballet revives Bolender's The Still Point.

A slender man, eves alight and alert, gets to his feet, gently moves the dancers aside, and demonstrates, his straightened back hitting the target like an arrow, no reaching with the bottom for the seat. "This is the way young ladies should sit properly," he tells them, neatly crossing his ankles.

Bolender, at 89, is neither young nor a lady, but he knows how ladies sit and a lot more besides. He is, as PNB Artistic Director Francia Russell puts it, "an icon of dance history," specifically American dance history. Not only was he present at the creation of ballet as an American art form, but as dancer and choreographer he was a...

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